


bruised fruit of the mighty tree

by sheitanoglu



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Abuse, Bodily Fluids, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eating Bodily Fluids, Emetophilia, Humiliation, M/M, Nonconsensual Kink, Omorashi, Torture, Vomiting, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 06:24:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheitanoglu/pseuds/sheitanoglu
Summary: “They feel powerless, rudderless,” the elf murmurs, his ghostly form kneeling next to Viren, when he’s alone in the cell once more. “And so, they seek to claim strength by debasing the greatest symbol of your kingdom’s institutional power, short of the King or Queen.” He sounds fascinated.“Well, I’m certainlygladI can serve as a subject for your anthropological studies.”





	bruised fruit of the mighty tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohnomarcus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohnomarcus/gifts).



> This fic is an object-study in why it's always a bad idea for a particular character to become my favorite. Because I habitually make my favorites **suffer.** As always, where _Dead Dove: Do Not Eat_ is concerned, **mind the tags.** They're there for a reason.
> 
> Dedicated to my dear friend [**ohnomarcus.**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohnomarcus) May the kinksters ever thrive in fandom.

It happens in the fifth day of his imprisonment.

The jail guards who come into his cell work in three shifts, the very same as the Crownguard. The night shift and the early morning shift are nothing out of the ordinary. They’re polite with him, if in a detached, dismissive way, clearly trying to keep from staring at his magic-warped skin. Viren is at least glad that the lot of them know how to be efficient in their tasks. The very _last_ thing he wants now, shamed and debased as he is, stripped of his rank and title and freedom and even of his fine clothes, is to deal with _idle chat._

The evening shift is… altogether different. All young bucks, no single woman among their number, eager to prove themselves. And rather eager for _other things_ as well. When he looks back on these hazy, feverish days, Viren will think that this was no coincidence at all and he will add it to the long list of transgressions that the fair-haired priestess of the Blessed Three will dearly pay for.

It happens in the fifth day of his imprisonment. The three guards who bring in his evening meal and who unshackle him from the wall look far too pleased with themselves, trading snickers and secret smiles. Viren ignores their childish games and sees to his meal, far too practical-minded for something as monumentally stupid as a hunger-strike. As if that would achieve anything other than see him force-fed like an _animal._

It happens in the fifth day of his imprisonment. He’s brought far more water than usual with his evening meal. Two full jugs, with the guards laughing and goading him.  “Drink up, old man!”

And Viren does, failing to see the trap springing shut all around him, because the summer heat has already come and the air is dry and unbearably warm even here, in the castle’s stone-wrought jail-cells. Aaravos isn’t present to warn him either — the elf’s illusion went back into the mirror, to preserve what strength he was able to summon just to appear with a visible form.

There is something to be said, Viren will think later on, about not knowing the depths of depravity young men can willingly reach. 

It happens in the fifth day of his imprisonment and Viren starts to figure out their plot far too late. More than one hour after the evening meal, when all the water he went and drank ends up right in his bladder. As always, he bites back on his pride and calls out for the guards, so they can unshackle him again and bring in the chamber-pot. The three of them walk in, as usual… and yet, that’s where the habitual pattern goes and _breaks_ , a thread neatly severed with a pair of scissors. They’re smiling down at him, in his awkward, half-crouching, half-kneeling position on the stone floor, arms chained above his head.

None of the young men, with their too-bright eyes and too-wide smiles, wolves on the hunt, is carrying any sort of chamber-pot.

“Well?” Viren demands, made restless and impatient and snappish by the heat and the unpleasant pressure in his bladder and the chains and the _imprisonment_ , may Opeli choke on her roast duck. “What are you waiting for?”  
  
They don’t answer, one of elbowing another, sharing a chuckle between themselves. None of Viren’s questions — from “shouldn’t _someone_ be of help here?” all the way to “have all of you lost your _minds?”_ gets him anything, other than sneers and quiet laughter, so he grits his teeth and falls silent. Whatever game they’re playing, he’ll have no part in it.

Unfortunately, all the fluid in his bladder isn’t going anywhere and, as the minutes trickle by, Viren’s discomfort steadily grows. A low pressure, it morphs into a dull pain, growing sharper by the second. Pulling in air through flared nostrils, Viren presses his lips into a hard, bloodless line, tries to keep from letting out any of the traitorous whimpers stuck in his throat. He’s reduced to shifting spasmodically in place, shuffling the weight of his body from one leg to the other.

For a moment Viren doesn't know which is _worse_ , the blinding pain in his bladder or the one in his right knee, that now has to take his weight over and over again. 

Then the pain reaches a mad, feverish pitch and Viren very nearly bites through his own tongue, pride fighting ferociously with the need to release all that immense pressure in his bladder. And then it all becomes too much — _too much!_ \-- he can't keep it in anymore and _lets go_ , something like tears at the corners of his eyes, a desperate sound torn right out of his chest.

The wild, shuddering relief is riddled with horror and shame at the feel of warmth flowing down his legs, over his skin, soaking through the fabric of his rough cotton pants, a steadily-spreading stain.

“Look at him! He went and pissed himself like a common dog!”

The guards laugh, loud and raucous and so clearly _delighted_ , pointing at Viren, hungry eyes trained on the dark, damp stain now covering his crotch and the front of his pants. The sharp smell of urine lies heavy in the stale air and Viren gags, tears of rage and shame and humiliation gathering between his lashes. They planned this.

The motherless sons of filth, they went and _planned_ this and he fell for it like a fool!

“What say you, boys? Should we leave him like this tonight, to dry out all by himself?”  
  
That gets another cruel bout of laughter and, for a terrible moment, Viren thinks they’ll leave him like this, soiled, to lie in his own filth. But before he can think of _something_ to say, tongue still glued to the roof of his mouth by shock, rough-skinned hands are on him, undoing the shackles and wrenching him up.

“Nah,” one of the young men says, with an ugly leer on his pale face, ripping the piss -soaked pants right off Viren’s legs, exposing him. “Let’s leave that for next time, I say.”  
  
_...Next time?  
_

Viren’s furious, horrified retort turns into a yelp, when two of them go and dunk cold water from a wooden bucket all over him, soaking him down to the skin. Then they start scrubbing him down with rough motions, slapping his thighs when he tries to instinctively close his knees, pinching his buttocks and laughing at the way he flinches, water and urine residue flowing down his legs.  
  
“When the Master of the Keys finds out about this,” Viren finally manages to grit out between his teeth, after they throw another pair of pants at him, dragging the tattered remnants of his pride around him like a cloak, “all of you will be dismissed from service and _thrown out of the castle.”  
_

“You’re not going to say anything, old man.”-

One of the youths steps in close, his breath filled with the rather pungent and very much unpleasant smell of onions. “For one, they’re not going to believe you. For another… are you _really_ going to embarrass yourself even more by admitting we made you piss your pants and there wasn’t anything you could do about it?”

And then they chain him to the small cot in the corner, as they do every night, walking out, still laughing among themselves.

Perhaps the worst part of the whole thing, in a way even more humiliating than him soiling himself, is that they turn out to be _right_ . Viren can’t bring himself to say anything when the night shift checks in on him. He’s silent and even more taciturn than usual when the morning shift unshackles him from the bed and brings in his breakfast, before moving him back to his perpetual place as a fixture on the wall. The words get stuck in his larynx every single time he even thinks about uttering them, bile rising so high that Viren can feel its rancid taste on the back of his tongue.  
  
Aaravos isn’t of particular help either, not in the way Viren counts _help._

“They feel powerless, rudderless,” the elf murmurs, his ghostly form kneeling next to Viren, when he’s alone in the cell once more. “And so, they seek to claim strength by debasing the greatest symbol of your kingdom’s institutional power, short of the King or Queen.” He sounds fascinated.

“Well, I’m certainly _glad_ I can serve as a subject for your anthropological studies.”

If he’s in any way offended by the biting sarcasm in Viren’s tone, Aaravos doesn’t show it.  A small smile blooms on his face, a thing of secrets hidden in the darkness between the stars.

“Am I correct in my interpretation?”  
  
Of course he is and it _rankles_ , Viren swallowing the harsh words he wants to offer. Instead, he settles on “How long until we can make our escape, as you promised?”  
  
“Soon,” Aaravos soothes, reaching out to touch the side of Viren’s face with a nearly translucent hand, tracing the line of his brow, the slope of his nose. A promise that, under normal circumstances, Viren wouldn’t trust at all. But these are far from normal circumstances and Viren will take everything he can _get_. Even if the elf carries a good deal of the blame for seeing him thrown in chains in the first place.

* * *

It happens in the eighth day of his imprisonment.

For two days in a row, they bring more and more water with his evening meal and, lacking any other actionable solution, Viren refuses to drink it. He turns his face away, grinding his molars together until they feel as if they might crack into splinters. All he needs to do is wait a little more, just _enough_ for Aaravos to finish the preparations for whatever ritual will free them both.

It happens in the eighth day of his imprisonment. True to his earlier, grim-minded predictions, the guards go and file a report claiming the prisoner is _‘refusing the necessary sustenance.’_ Viren sees the very concrete results of that report when he’s unchained from the wall and bound to the little cot, two men working to force water right down his throat.

Something wild and ferocious burns and crackles in his chest, the very same thing that set him against the Dragon King himself. The very same thing that kept him from running and locked Viren’s feet in place, ready to destroy any and all Crownguard who dared enter his private study. So Viren _fights_ , struggles, bucks mightily against their hold, chokes on the water and coughs until his throat _hurts_ and spits it right in their faces. One of the two ends up covered in the muddy assortment that was Viren’s erstwhile lunch, when the fingers violently prying his jaws open and poking down his throat make him throw up.

“Son of a whore,” he hears, before a painful blow to his side makes him curl up in agony, bright stars exploding in the darkness behind his eyes. Then there’s a scuffle and snarling and “don’t leave any _marks_ , idiot!”

Whatever respite Viren might have earned comes to a spectacular end, when the third guard steps into the fray, gripping him by the chin and wrenching his jaw open once more. And then a tube is being pushed down his throat and there’s nothing he can do, save for empty, helpless gagging, because the other two are now all but _sitting_ on him, pressing Viren down into the straw mattress.

It happens in the eighth day of his imprisonment. They pour water down the tube and directly into his stomach and all Viren can do is lie on his back and take it, pulling in quick, short breaths through his nose, mouth open so wide that every muscle in his face _aches_ . When they’re finally satisfied he’s had his fill, they pull the tube out, searing pain shooting right up his gullet and into his mouth, along with the sour taste of vomit. He’s still chained to the cot and held down, rough hands digging into his ribs and his sides. Claiming the only bit of solace that is still _his_ , Viren squeezes his eyes firmly shut and turns his head to the stone wall. 

It doesn’t take long for the stinging pressure in his bladder to return. A simple murmur, at first, growing into a roar as time crawls forward. He could save himself the horrible pain by giving them precisely what they want, by releasing the urine instead of struggling to hold it in. But Viren has just enough pride left that he can’t bring himself to give in without a struggle. Not in front of these base, perverted creatures. So he takes deep, slow breaths, focusing on self-control and on anything other than the pain. Distracts himself with the feel of the straw poking into his skin, the rough cotton covering his body, the smell of sour, salty sweat in the air.

“Look here,” one of the men orders, fisting a hand in Viren’s hair and yanking his head forward. He refuses to obey, eyes still pressed shut, the pain in his bladder rather resembling a sword freshly pulled from the blacksmith’s forge and unceremoniously stuck in his flesh.

It happens in the eighth day of his imprisonment. New weight suddenly presses down on his lower belly and Viren’s eyes snap open instinctively. One of the men — the very same one he went and creatively covered in half-digested food — is leering down at him, pressing one booted foot right down on Viren’s lower abdomen, above his pubic bone. The pain explodes into a coruscation of color and light and Viren cries out, unable to stop the sound before it leaves his mouth. Just as he’s unable to stop the tears in his eyes, that turn his vision cloudy.

The guard, intent on having his revenge, only presses down further, digging the heel of his boot right into Viren’s bladder.

“No! Stop! _Stop!”_

But it’s all for naught, because the pressure is too much, too great and too wide for one single person to endure and all that fluid rushes forward again, in a small wave. The warmth and the stench are the same as before, spreading faster and further this time, soaking through not only his clothes, but through the bedding as well, urine flowing in golden rivulets down the bed’s metal sides and dripping to the floor.

“Look at that, boys! Told ya we could get him to go and piss like a horse this time!”

 _“No daydreaming,”_ Master Llewellyn used to tell him when he was a child, rapping Viren over the knuckles with that heavy wooden ruler of his, whenever he caught him distracted by his own thoughts. “ _You’ll get nothing out of living in your own thoughts, boy.”_ Viren might have recognized the truth of his mentor’s words, but that does little to change the fact that retreating into his own thoughts is, at least now, the only solution he can even remotely _think_ of. He mentally curls in on himself, tunes out their crass words, tunes out their coarse, cruel laughter and fills his mind with equations instead. With precise chemical formulas and mental experiments he never got to perform in the flesh, while the piss and the tears both cool on his skin. 

The guards pour cold water all over him once more, leaving Viren to lie dressed in wet clothes, on a soggy mattress still faintly reeking of his own piss. When Aaravos materializes next to him once more, all he can spare for the elf is a short, baleful glance.

“Do you still blame me for your current circumstances?”

“If you hadn’t cut off our connection,” Viren grits out, through the wretched taste still lingering in his mouth, “we wouldn’t even be having this discussion!”

“If I failed to cut off our connection, you would likely be dead now, riddled with arrows.”

Aaravos says it so matter-of-factly, in his deep, resonant voice, that Viren can find little to argue with, as much as he might want to insist that he could have _destroyed them all, i_ f the power of the Primal Sources still flowed through him. The elf’s hand moves over his face once again, before settling in his hair, stroking the still-damp threads, making something hard and tense uncoil in Viren, even if for only a few moments.

“How much longer?”

“Soon.”

“Between your _‘soon’_ and the heat-death of the universe, I expect the second will come first, elf.”

That gets a chuckle out of Aaravos — a rich, surprisingly pleasant sound, familiar to Viren in a way he can’t even hope to put into words. Familiar like the light of the stars and the feel of dark magic coursing through his veins with each spell.

“Patience. I need every last drop of my strength, if the ritual is to succeed. We will both have our freedom. And then I will give you all that your heart desires, you have my word.”

The words of a snake, the words of an ash-winder if he’s ever heard one, Viren grouses, in the privacy of his own thoughts. And yet Aaravos hasn’t lied to him so far, not _directly_. Far more dangerous, he thinks, a thing of starlit beauty, that comes with soft, wanted words, with promises which stoke Viren’s wildest dreams, as opposed to an enemy that charges at him directly, even an assassin in the night. All the same, what other choice does he have? He went and burned all other bridges and now, his key away from his putrid nightmare may carry a price he will, one day, be unable to pay.

“Focus your thoughts away from all they force you to do. It will make it easier for you.”

“Focus on what, _you?”_ Viren challenges, voice low and hoarse, so sick and tired and scraped _raw_ , right down to the bone, that the filter between his mouth and his mind is all but gone.

“If it helps,” Aaravos answers mildly and it doesn’t quite escape Viren’s notice that the elf’s little smile widens at this, clearly _pleased_ by the notion of being the singular focus of Viren’s thoughts.

“Are all your kind this particularly odd, or did you stand out and get tossed right into that mirror as a consequence?”

It helps, having someone to trade jibes with. A small speck of _‘almost-normal’,_ in the complete and utter lunacy that his life has become. Not that Viren ever expected a centuries old Startouch elf stroking his hair and indulging him in witty repartee would ever count as _‘almost-normal.’_

“There is only one such as myself.”

Not that Viren expected anything else. Certainly no further details on how Aaravos found himself not only in a dimensional prison, but in the Dragon King’s possession as well.

His sleep is restless and fitful, under Aaravos’ watchful gaze. With the cold, gray light of dawn, the morning shift comes in with his breakfast once more, two of the guards wrinkling their noses.

“What’s that _smell?_ Did… did he go and _piss_ himself?”

“Watch your tongue!”

The third guard — a broad-shouldered, red-haired woman that Viren noticed and remembered easily, on account of her rather matronly demeanor — gives the younger men a glare, before handing Viren the small tray with his breakfast. Bread and cheeses and cured ham and fruits, nothing that would need a fork or a knife, for safety purposes. She watches him while he eats, as always, her eyes lingering on the way he hesitates with the small water jug, before drinking its contents.

When he’s done, the tray is taken away and he’s chained to the wall once more, one of the guards checking the manacles to be certain they’re secure.

“Toss that mattress out and bring in a new one,” the red-haired matron orders and both men hastily rush to obey, grabbing the soiled mattress at the ends and rushing out with it, identical looks of distaste on their faces. When it’s just her and Viren, she gives him a far too sharp look, dark eyes taking him in from head to toe.

“Listen,” she says, voice low and careful. “If there’s anything going on, I want you to know that you can talk to me. I may be in charge of little more than the morning shift, but I can speak with the right people and get things sorted. You understand?”

A little over a _week_ ago, he would have never needed someone like this woman to _‘get things sorted’_ for him, Viren thinks, rage and shame percolating in his blood, writhing under his skin and poisoning his words, until all he wants to do is snarl out imprecations at her and her entire lineage. The urge to spill the venom in his stomach is so great that he ends up biting his tongue again, taking in a few deep, steadying breaths.

“Madam, the only _‘sorting out’_ I have any need for at the moment involves being left alone with my thoughts.” It takes far too much of Viren to dredge out even that small modicum of civility and the red-haired matron makes a face at him, not looking convinced by half.

“If you say so.” And, giving him one last, lingering look, she does as he asked and walks out, the door closing firmly shut behind her.

* * *

They come with jugs of water and leering, toothy smiles once more, in the early evening — and this time, Viren does little in the way of fighting. Far better to do as they want and preserve his strength, if not his dignity.

So he eats and he drinks, pretending that none of them are sitting in the cell with him. Looks at the moss growing on the walls and the craggy pattern in the stone floor, taps a half-forgotten rhythm with the fingers of one hand over the cold, unrelenting metal of the manacles.

When it’s time, he holds it just enough for this depraved lot to be satisfied, hanging by the chains that secure him to the wall, breathing deeply and evenly. Then, with a long exhale, Viren releases once more, wetting himself thoroughly, urine staining his pants and flowing down his feet and toes and pooling on the floor. They jeer and mock him as always — and this time, Viren raises his eyes and meets their own, acknowledging them for the first time, in the way a sovereign might acknowledge lowly criminals dragged before his throne.

“Are you all quite done yet?”

No hesitation in his voice, no warble in his tone. Of _that_ , at least, he can be proud.

The effect is… interesting, to say the least. Two of them stop smiling altogether, scowling at Viren, whereas the third — clearly not the brightest of the bunch — blinks at him, looking rather confused.  
  
“Were you expecting more tears, perhaps?” Viren continues, dragging the words out with a sneer, doing his best to glare down his nose at them, even when they’re all looming above him. They can’t properly beat him or the other shifts would see the marks and figure out something is afoul. They can make him drink and piss himself at length and he will _do it,_ now that Viren settled the thing in his mind as yet another necessary step in his escape and the fulfillment of his plans. “Or perhaps begging? So sorry to disappoint.”

The-one-that-got-vomited-on recovers first, a thunderous look on his boorish face.

“Still think you’re so high-and-mighty, with your books and your magic, do you?” He strides forward, a hard look in his eyes, fisting one hand in Viren’s hair and wrenching his head up and backward.

For one dizzying moment, Viren fears this baseborn lout will go so far as to break his neck. He scrambles in the chains that hold him in place, as his throat and spine _scream_ in protest, several clumps of hair coming out of his scalp entirely, with the force of that grip. He’s so distracted by pain that he misses the sound of a codpiece being removed and finds himself face to face with a flaccid cock. It’s unexpected enough that Viren doesn’t even know how to react… until a stream of warm, strong-smelling fluid splashes all over his face, getting into his eyes and nose and mouth.

Sputtering and choking, Viren fights to pull his head back, more clumps of hair coming out, the guard’s cruel fingers all but digging into the skin of his scalp. Then he’s being ripped out of the chains once more, manacles used to tightly secure both hands behind his back. His knees hit the floor with bone-jarring force, the white-hot agony in his injured leg very nearly making Viren pass out.

“This’ll teach you to lord it over us! Come on, swallow! Swallow!”

Two more organs are swinging in his face now and Viren snarls out a curse, all but snapping his teeth shut around the hand that tries to force his mouth open. Then there’s another hand in his hair and two fingers pinching his nose shut and Viren can’t _breathe_ anymore, can’t pull in air through his nostrils, panic rising in him like the ghost-tides on the shores of Evenere.

When he finally opens his mouth, desperate for breath, black spots dancing at the corners of his eyes, the men relieve themselves. They piss straight into Viren’s mouth, hitting the back of his throat and making him swallow it all, the warm, bitter liquid going down his gullet and into his stomach.

Released from their hold, Viren doubles over and retches violently and throws up once more, spraying the floor with the remains of his dinner. One boot comes crashing down on the back of his head, pressing his face right against the mess he made, nose assailed by the sour stench of vomit. He retches again, but there’s nothing left to come out, save for acidic juices that burn on their way up.   

“Go on. Clean it up. We’re waiting.”

That boot pushes down with more force, the pressure against Viren’s skull turning into ringing pain and he struggles to shift his face to the side, just to keep his nose from getting crushed flat against the stone.

“Lick it up.”

And so he does, with no other solution open before him, all that weight on his skull far too much to bear. Viren tries to somehow keep from _breathing in_ the horrific smell, as his tongue runs over the floor, picking up small pieces of barely-digested food and swallowing them before he can even _think_ to throw up again. His entire body shudders from the top of his head all the way to the tips of his toes. 

The men grow bored quickly enough of him wading through the vomit and instead pull Viren’s face to the side, guiding his mouth to the small puddles of urine. One particular heel digs into his spine with ruthless, circular motions when he hesitates for more than one heartbeat. So Viren forces himself to _not_ hesitate, forces himself to lap it all up as it if were sweet cream made by the castle’s pastry-chefs, licking and swallowing as he’s dragged across the floor. The taste remains just as monstrous and it’s perhaps sheer force of will or maybe a small miracle that keeps him from explosively voiding the contents of his stomach all over again.

Halfway through, it strikes Viren that there’s the impression of a warm, half-solid hand at the nape of his neck, gently stroking the skin there, with motions meant to calm and to soothe. Whether a figment of his imagination or Aaravos is truly _here_ , unseen by the eyes of his tormentors, matters very little for Viren right now. His focus is narrowed down to getting _through this,_ eyes stinging from the urine, face covered in stinking grok, reduced to the status of an _animal,_ counting down the breaths until the nightmare will end. 

The three end it only close to the last hour of their shift, throwing Viren back onto the metal cot and dumping another bucket of water on him. They do the very same to the mess still left on the floor, pouring enough water to make the gunk flow down the slight incline and into the gutter in the northernmost corner.

“More of the same tomorrow, don’t you worry, your lordship,” one of them assures, with a pat on Viren’s buttocks. Chained face-down to the sodden mattress, there’s nothing he can do or say, save for letting out a shuddering breath when they all walk out and it’s finally _over._

“It was far from wise to provoke them like that.”

_“Don’t.”_

The word comes out almost like a hoarse bark, Viren lifting his head up just enough to glower at Aaravos, half-torn hair falling into his eyes. The elf raises his hands in a placating gesture, before reaching down for Viren. His palm hovers over his back for several heartbeats and when Viren doesn’t shake his head or attempt to pull away, Aaravos closes the small distance, starlit fingers carefully stroking over skin covered by wet cotton.

“It wasn’t intended as a reproach. Merely a simple truth.”

“I care for _survival_ , now, elf, not wisdom.”

“Perhaps the two are one and the same, at times”

He lets out a muffled snort, far beyond caring how undignified it might sound. “If that were so, you would have never ended up in that mirror.”

The hand on his back stops moving, for just a half-breath, before resuming its gentle strokes, Aaravos letting out a low, throaty hum. In any other situation, Viren would have honed in on that, something to be looked at in detail and pulled apart, one attack-vector against the elf’s impenetrable wall of secrets and cryptic, centuries-old nonsense. Yet now he barely has enough strength left to note the odd reaction and file it away for another day, burying his face back in the mattress.

He’s close to sleep, close to another few hours of fragmented, half-remembered nightmares — Harrow ordering him to kneel and pulling his cock out, pissing in Viren’s mouth, before turning into Opeli and slapping him right across the face — when Aaravos leans in and whispers in his ear. A promise of beautiful destruction.

“We are ready.”

* * *

 Dessa of Claypole, First-Lieutenant of the Home-Guard Regiment, currently assigned as chief-of-the-guards for the morning shift in the jails of Castle Katolis, feels as if a migraine went and got sick inside her skull. The pain is dull and relentless, radiating from the back of her head. Precisely where it went and collided right with the stone wall.

 _“Never walk around with a concussion,”_ is a rookie-level lesson, but nearly everyone else is in far worse shape than her, at a cursory glance. So the good First-Lieutenant is on her feet, wobbling down the hallway, ordering the medical teams to start triage _immediately._ Anything else can wait, the wounded are the absolute priority right now.

All around her, the jail-wing is in absolute chaos. Every single one of the massive oakwood doors, each heavier than one hundred men put together, has been reduced to nothing but smoldering cinders. What chance did mere soldiers have, she thinks, with nothing but steel and the strength of their arms, against this thing of wild elemental fury?

The screams and the cries and the moans of the injured surround her on all sides and Dessa purses her lips and hobbles down the hallway. There’s little she can do for the most grievously injured and the others can wait for the arms or legs to be put in splints. Her priority, now, is to _understand_ what led to this.

“Did he say anything to you?’

The High Priestess of the Blessed Three has to very nearly hobble her walk, just to remain in-step with Dessa. It would have amused the First Lieutenant, on any other day.

“Merely that I showed him kindness and he would grant me a boon. A warning, to stay away from the jail cells at dusk.” They were sharp, strange words, a feverish light in the former High Mage’s eyes. He stared at her, as if willing Dessa to understand the unspoken part of his warning. It had been enough to make her think he might be sick or perhaps even losing his grip on reality. It had also been enough to see her glued to her post well beyond the end of her shift, a whisper of foreboding at the back of her thoughts.

“And _this_ is why you were here, outside of your assigned post?”

“Schedule a disciplinary hearing if you want, High Priestess. I have other priorities right now.”

The distinctive stench of burnt flesh is stronger the deeper she goes down the corridor and Dessa’s stomach winds itself into several impressive knots, by the time she reaches the cell that held the former Lord Viren until merely two hours ago.

“By the Three,” she whispers, staring.

Before her, two bodies are lying on their knees on the floor, as if in supplication. And _‘as if’_ is the right word for it — they’re bent and warped and contorted, well beyond what a normal human body is capable of. The nightmarish mirror-image of the pious faithful kneeling to whisper a prayer to the Blessed Three. They're thoroughly blackened and charred, most of the soft tissues seared away. All that’s left behind is pockmarked bone and grisly visages, small pieces of hair and skin still clinging to the skulls. 

A third body lies several hand-spans away, curled up against one of the cell’s stone walls. Said wall is covered in dried blood and distinctive scratch-marks. For a single, terrible moment, Dessa can almost see it in her mind’s eye — this man scrambling for cover and then desperately clawing at the wall, in a last, mad attempt to save himself. Whereas the others are very clearly burned, this one very much looks as if he took several _lightning-strikes_ all at once.

“Madman!” Lady Opeli curses behind Dessa, coughing and wheezing at the heavy stench in the air. “Murderer! I should have had the soldiers put him down like the mad dog he was!”

Slowly, the First-Lieutenant shakes her head. She remembers the former High Mage’s face — corpse-gray and strange and stained with darkness. Remembers how his eyes hadn’t been great pools of black, when he came down the hallway, but rather filled with energy and fire and, of all things, _starlight_. Remembers how he met her own eyes and very clearly recognized her. That, of all things, is Dessa’s last memory of those moments of blind panic and terror, before a gust of air picked her up and slammed her against the wall, neatly knocking her lights out.

“Beg pardon High Priestess, but not even _dogs_ go mad all on their own.” Dessa shakes her head, dark eyes narrowed. “Usually, they’re driven to it.”


End file.
